While India's nuclear tests have been well received at home as a sign of strength in the face of global opposition to building weapons of mass destruction, they will lead to a dangerous arms race in the region, turning south Asia into one of the world's most volatile flash points.
The coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has long criticised previous governments for "bartering" away India's security concerns under pressure from the West by not building nuclear weapons to discourage any "adventurism" by its belligerent neighbours China and Pakistan.
The BJP had declared in its manifesto that if elected it would "consider" exercising India's nuclear option exercised in 1974 as well as establish a national security council to carry out the first ever strategic defence review to "cover all aspects of military requirement and organisation".
Security analysts said the BJP had made a "definite" nuclear statement with yesterday's tests. They said its policy on weapons of mass destruction also struck a "sympathetic chord" amongst India's nuclear establishment that has been wanting to conduct tests to hone its nuclear capability.
Scientists had begun preparing for another underground explosion at Pokhran, the desert region of western Rajasthan state in late 1995 but the Congress government of the former prime minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, abandoned all test plans after American newspapers, quoting US spy satellite pictures, reported the proposed explosion.
This was followed soon after by general elections and political turbulence during which all talk of testing was abandoned. But official sources said the monitoring equipment remained in place.
India rejected the draft of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) at Geneva two years ago, saying it was not committed to a timebound programme to eliminate all nuclear weapons and did not suit its national security interests.
It refused to accept a provision that would require it to join the five nuclear weapon states - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - in ratifying the CTBT and the accompanying Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. Both treaties cannot come into force unless ratified by 37 countries party to the International Monitoring System (IMS) to record regional seismic activities related to nuclear explosions. Pakistan has declared that without India's participation the CTBT would be "dead on arrival" and raised the nuclear spectre in south Asia.
It too continued to develop its clandestine nuclear weapons programme and last month Dr A Q Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's atom bomb, said that Pakistan was merely waiting for the government's "nod" before conducting its first nuclear explosion.
The belligerent nuclear posturing in India and Pakistan is backed by domestic public opinion in both countries which favours extensive nuclear testing as a prelude to building weapons. In countrywide surveys carried out some time ago around 75 per cent of Pakistanis favoured stockpiling nuclear weapons while 62 per cent in India wanted the same.
Strategists in either country believe the spectre of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would prevent the other from nuclear ambitions. But that still would not prevent them from amassing nuclear arsenals.
In a clear reference yesterday to nuclear-capable China and Pakistan, with whom India has been to war over unresolved territorial disputes since independence 51 years ago, the Indian prime minister's principal secretary, Mr Brijesh Mishra, said the tests established that the country had a proven capability for a "weaponised" nuclear programme to face a dangerous nuclear environment.
After its first and only underground nuclear test in 1974, India said it wanted to utilise nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and had no intentions of building nuclear weapons. Thereafter it has achieved nuclear self-sufficiency in weapons-grade fissionable material, and has built 10 commercial nuclear power stations and four research reactors. Seven nuclear power stations and a nuclear submarine are under construction and another 10 plants are planned.